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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9024673" data-attributes="member: 71699">I feel you do a good job here of getting at our differences. A dramatic or narrative approach wants those goblins to terrorize the village so that PCs have something to do. An immersionist approach by my lights wants the goblins to terrorize the village because there's a socio-economic reason. There is a confidence (or if you like, faith) that such reasons will ultimately play out more interestingly in play.The players capture a goblin. "Why did you attack the village?" "Because their cows polluted our drinking water." The players find themselves on the spot in a way that for me has depth behind it. The dramatic approach can focus on what matters to the conversation, and fill in those details later. Either can work.We could be speaking from positions in one of the major divisions in game studies: narratology versus ludology. However, I would say my position is more skeptical. I resist finally categorising games in either of those ways. (Sometimes I picture that everything that has been called narrative until now is a primitive form of game, so that game both contains and supersedes narrative. How does it supersede? Through those facets a ludological perspective brings into focus.)RPGs must accept arrangements made for the sake of the play. If what you mean here is that ideally they would not: then why? One concept is the maintenance of suspension of disbelief (SOD). Arrangements that shatter SOD for the given players are not ideal. Perhaps then you are expressing fears for the suspension of disbelief?It's not clear then, why one would not have similar fears for say rolling dice? I suppose one could say that cranking the handle is dissimilar from the water in the bucket. What then of limits that character generation mechanics put on who can exist in the game and the paucity of facts about them (compared with a person in the real world)?That can work for immersionist play. Ars Magica sometimes has the feel of it. I'm not sure about the necessity to discard. For example, it can be immersive to play a family or institution of some kind - generating characters for the folk forming it.Those are good examples. I agree that playing one character has limitations. It's just that I prefer those limitations.I'm not sure what you have in mind for "traditional". If you would feel more immersed not shackled to one character, I would say go for it. I've tried it - albeit, not as extensively - and while it could just be down to lack of the right structures, focusing on one character has so far given me the strongest feeling of being within the world.That seems very gamist <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Think of characters as the spotlight or viewpoint. That makes them the centre of our attention as an RPG troupe. It's not ideal to put the character in the background... because the point is to be immersed as the character.This falls within the definition of exceptional by my lights.Everything being perceived through them, and everything being about them, seem to me two different things.</blockquote>

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